Episode #40: Burnout, Neurodivergence, and High Sensitivity in Leadership with Rachel Radway
A thoughtful conversation about hidden strengths that highly sensitive people bring to leadership — and why empathy may be exactly what modern workplaces need.
Kim: Rachel, thank you so much for joining me today. It’s so great to meet you.
Rachel: It’s a pleasure to meet you, Kim. Thank you for having me on your show.
Kim: Yeah, absolutely. So, the first thing I want to know is about your journey in high sensitivity and how you found out that this was a trait that you had and what that was like for you.
Rachel: So, I don’t remember how I first heard about Elaine Aron’s book. I know that I read it just a few years after it came out, so somewhere around 2000, early 2000s. And when I read it, suddenly a light bulb went on and I’m sure I know that other guests of yours have said similar things. I’ve always known that I was more sensitive to various things. I knew that as a child. I was sensitive to sounds and smells, and I was often told, “You’re too sensitive,” and “Grow with thicker skin.” And I just knew that I was different, and I was more emotional than a lot of people. I had more difficulty with feedback than a lot of people around me. And I was sensitive to energies in various ways. And when I read the book, The Highly Sensitive Person, I was astonished to learn that 20 to 30% of the population had a similar trait.
There were definitely things in the book that resonated with me very, very strongly and a few things that didn’t, but it kind of opened up a new world. And then over time, I completely forgot about it. And I think that we learn about things when we’re really ready for them. And what happened was a few years ago, I had started my coaching business, and I was in a bootcamp for people who were looking to launch a group program. And there were some exercises that we had to do that I was kind of stumped by and I really wasn’t sure what direction to go in. And my coaching business, I was focused on women leaders in corporate, but I hadn’t gotten any more specific than that. One night during the bootcamp, I was flipping around on Netflix looking for something to watch and the documentary called Sensitive came up and I realized watching it that it was made from Elaine Aron’s book, and it got me thinking about the topic all over again.
And I ended up rereading the book and then realizing that almost all of the clients who had been drawn to work with me turned out to be highly sensitive. Most of them had never heard of the trait, like I hadn’t before. I had read the book and they were not familiar with the book, but they all shared a lot of the traits. And when I started thinking about it, I decided to really focus my work on high sensitivity and that led me to, in a bunch of different directions. I also learned that I had ADHD around the same time and that kind of opened up a new area of exploration, which I talk about in my book, and I can talk about later on in the podcast.
Kim: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So, you were more in a corporate environment, but you were finding out that the people that were more attracted to you, would you say you also enjoyed working with HSPs more or can you just explain a little bit about why that might be?
Rachel: Yeah.
Kim: I think that we as coaches accidentally bring in the highly sensitive people and enjoy working with them. And I’m curious from your perspective what that’s like.
Rachel: Absolutely. I think the sensitivity to energy is part of it, even if we’re not aware that that’s something that we do. We all emit energies and you can call it biophotons, you can call it auras, you can call it whatever, depending on what your beliefs are. But I think we are drawn to other people’s energies for one thing. And I put myself out there in a particular way. There’s a lot of conversation with HSP coaches in particular about how to market ourselves in a way that feels authentic and that doesn’t feel salesy or cringey. And that’s true with HSPs who are in any kind of self-employment or any kind of a creative endeavor where they’re trying to market their work. So, I think that it was, we’re drawn to like, we have, as humans, we have biases around this too, that we’re drawn to people who are in some way similar to ourselves.
And I think because we tend to be highly empathetic or empathic or both, and we understand what other people are dealing with, we talk about those things when we put ourselves out there, and then people who identify with those issues are drawn to us.
So, I think there’s a few different reasons why it happens, but I love working with HSPs, whether or not they identify that way. And actually it’s a term that I don’t use anymore for a few reasons. So, I talk about being highly perceptive. That’s the name of a book that I wrote. One of the struggles that I had, you mentioned, again, that I was in corporate, one of the struggles that I had very early on when I had identified the audience I wanted to work with was a lot of leaders don’t want to identify as highly sensitive because it is a term that is so misunderstood and wrongly stigmatized in our culture. And this applies to all genders, not just women, the males who identify as highly sensitive have a different set of issues and some overlapping issues, but really not a lot of people want to be thought of as highly sensitive.
And I actually conducted a poll on my private Facebook page, so personal page, it’s not a business page. Everyone I’m connected to on that page is someone I know personally and have met. Some of them are people I went to school with and it tends to be a fairly educated, fairly progressive group. And I asked, what comes to mind when you hear the word sensitive or the term highly sensitive when it applies to a person? And as you would expect, I got a wide range of answers and it actually leaned a little bit more positive than I thought it was going to. It was probably about half and half, but there were a lot of responses along the lines of somewhere on the spectrum or have to tiptoe around them or difficult to work with or overly emotional. And these are all things that a lot of us grew up with and-
Kim: Fragile. Yeah.
Rachel: Fragile, exactly, and struggle with. And of course, if you’re a leader in the workplace or want to be a leader anywhere, this is not something that you want to identify as. And yet, one of our core principles and values tends to be authenticity and not wanting to try to be someone else. So
When I was writing my book and I had a conversation with the publisher and he came up, he understood the challenge immediately and he came up with the name with the word perceptive, I thought it was brilliant because it fits HSPs on so many different levels. There is the act of perceiving, and we tend to notice all of the little details that people don’t, that others don’t. And we do that in different ways. We take it in with our eyes, with our ears, with our senses, with all of our senses. And then there is the fact of being perceptive, which has a bunch of different definitions, and I think all of them apply really suitably to HSPs. So, that was a really long answer to your question.
Kim: Yeah. No, I love that. It’s like, yeah. And it’s funny when you mentioned that because some of those parts are true about us, but it’s not the whole picture and it’s not from a place of inner knowing, inner power, confidence. It’s almost like people assume the worst of us, which can be tough for us because from our experience, it’s the bad interactions or the negative interactions that really leave a mark on us, on our hearts. And it’s hard to get over that, especially in the corporate world, if you have an off interaction with a coworker or you don’t feel connected to your boss, that can weigh so heavily on the HSP spirit.
Rachel: Yeah, absolutely.
Kim: Overcome that. And it’s a layer of hurt when you hear people assume that that’s who you are because that’s who you’re not wanting to always be.
Rachel: Right. And I think we all carry these stories within us, and that’s one of the reasons that I do the work that I do. The people I work with tend to be extremely bright and extremely capable, and a lot of them are high achievers and they don’t want to come forward and say, “I’m highly sensitive.” Even if they recognize somewhere inside that they are and that that is a gift, we’ve just been given messages all our lives that it’s not a gift, that it’s a weakness, that it’s a flaw.
Kim: Yeah. And you’re almost taking for granted that people are going to understand, especially when it comes to work, because we want to put our best foot forward. And I don’t know, and I’d love to hear your perspective on this too. I feel like there’s such a difference between owning your high sensitivity, knowing you’re sensitive and showing up in a leadership-type way versus feeling like you have to share that and have to assume everyone knows what you’re talking about. It’s that balance between, do we spend time convincing others that this is a good thing or do we just show up as we are and just show the world that we’re strong, we’re capable, we’re perceptive?
Rachel: I think in my experience, the people who show up feeling like they need to explain it all to everyone are not necessarily the ones who are the most sensitive, at least by nature. We’re all different. I’m going to back up a step. So, when I was writing my book, one of the books that I spent a lot of time with and actually interviewed the author, and she’s been on your show too, is Esther Bergsma, the author of The Brain of the Highly Sensitive Person. And one of the things that I learned from Esther’s book is that high sensitivity is a form of neurodivergence because she talks about the FMRI studies and other scientific studies that have been done that show that the brains of highly sensitive people are structured differently, are wired differently. And it could be the wiring, it could be the structures.
And I started, given my recent diagnosis of ADHD, I started diving more deeply into neurodivergence and learning more about it. And there’s a saying in the neurodivergent community that you meet one neurodivergent person, you meet one, you’ve met one neurodivergent person because we’re all different. It’s the same with people who are highly sensitive. And there are different things that can cause high sensitivity. You can be born with it. You can have some sort of trauma or injury that can cause it. But the people that I am most drawn to are the ones who don’t need to prove themselves. They don’t need to explain it to everyone. They just lead in a different way. They often lead with empathy, they lead with authenticity, they lead with vulnerability. They do struggle in a lot of ways because since, first of all, since a lot of them are introverts, we know that those two traits overlap very, very highly.
They don’t always feel heard or seen or listened to, which can be particularly a struggle if you’re in a leadership role by title and you’re not feeling like you have a place at the table that you should.
So, a lot of the work that I end up doing is helping people like this find ways to communicate more effectively with all of their stakeholders so that they really can be heard because there are so many challenges. One is we don’t necessarily need to speak up just to hear our voices, which can happen a lot in corporate workspaces. And so, we may feel like a conversation has gone on incredibly long and we don’t have anything to add to it, and so we don’t speak up. And then we can get criticized for never participating in the conversation, or we may feel that we disagree. One of the traits that comes up a lot among the people that I work with is we’re downloading a lot of information. We know this, and we tend to be able to connect a lot of dots. And so, we can often see several steps ahead in ways that other people around us don’t necessarily see.
We don’t always recognize that that is what’s happening and that other people aren’t doing that same thing. And sometimes that can lead us to reject ideas that other people have come up with and say that we know that they’re not going to work, but not have the data behind it because we don’t know how we know these things, and our society is so focused on data-driven, evidential, what am I trying to say? Conclusions or solutions or proposals that intuition is really not trusted. And so people can get dismissed in various ways by raising those ideas or those objections or whatever. So, there are a lot of reasons why people who are more highly sensitive and more perceptive don’t speak up at work, and that can harm their chances of being seen as a leader.
Kim: Right. So, what’s the gap there? What’s the, not solution, but yeah, I guess what’s the answer? Is it empowering more HSPs to step into leadership confidently? Is it educating the corporate leadership to value quieter, more introverted, more cerebral people on their team? What’s your thought on that?
Rachel: I think that there are multiple approaches, and I think you’ve touched on at least two of them. One of them, and this is part of the work that I do, and I’m sure you do as well, is really empowering folks who are more highly sensitive to embrace their gifts as gifts. In addition to the messages that we’ve all received, again, a lot of us, we don’t necessarily recognize our gifts as gifts. We often think that the things that we can do are things that everyone can do, and that isn’t true, that there are gifts that we have that stand out, and helping us, helping all of us embrace our gifts and understand what value they bring to family, to community, to the workplace, to all of the spaces that we inhabit is really, really, really important. And helping people understand when is a good time for them to speak up and how to deal with the feedback or the criticism more effectively.
I think those are really, really important approaches. On the other side, and this is work that I am also doing, raising awareness of neurodiversity and neurodivergence. And the benefits that embracing the fact of neurodiversity brings to everyone, brings to individuals, brings to teams, brings to organizations, brings to companies as a whole.
A lot of people think about neurodiversity as something they may have to face one day, but it’s here, it exists everywhere we are. When you have two people in a room, you have neurodiversity. They also, a lot of leaders tend to think that accommodation means something that’s going to be expensive and that’s going to take time and take training. And really the things that you can do to accommodate one small group of your larger population is going to show benefits for your entire population in one way or another. And this can be really small things. Understanding that, for example, sending out meeting agendas in advance and sending them in multiple formats and allowing participation in meetings to happen in different ways. It doesn’t have to be people raising their hand and talking or just talking above everyone. There are other ways that people can contribute their thoughts and participate in conversations and in decision-making.
So, helping leaders and organizations understand ways to embrace and support all of the different ways that people think and feel and function and operate in the world and in their companies is going to make everyone more successful.
Kim: Yeah. And it’s not just, like you said, about accommodating a certain group of people that can’t hack it, because I think that’s kind of how the attitude goes. We’re making sacrifices so that people can feel involved. And no, people think differently, and they have so much to offer your organization in a way that you’re not really used to because you haven’t historically opened up the field in this way that lets people really respond and think through and give deeper solutions in a way that’s beneficial to you.
Rachel: Exactly. Exactly. And one of the things that I am constantly reminded of is the leaders I work with are some of the most beloved in their organization. Their teams are the ones who feel seen and heard and supported and they have professional growth and development opportunities and they love their bosses. So if only the executives, the senior level of leadership could recognize that and support those leaders and give them more opportunities to lead in the ways that are authentic to them, we would see so much more engagement and productivity and innovation and all the things that companies are looking for and are failing in because they don’t understand this.
Kim: Way less burnout. I know because it’s almost like the CEO of the company is usually like the masculine male who pushes through everything and demanding KPIs and demanding all the things. A perfect example, I used to work for a creative group as a writer and I had the best manager. I just felt lockstep with him. He was training me. He was so well respected in our field. I felt comfortable and I wanted to do the best work ever. And he left and another manager came in and was just the opposite, the pushing, the metrics. And I went from thriving in my role and feeling like I could do anything to shutting down completely, burning out. And they’ve done studies with highly sensitive people in the workplace. The people we work with are so important, but it just highlights what you were saying, that the way these leaders show up and manage staff, you could have a team that’s really thriving and excited or pushing to meet metrics that they don’t care about. And it’s a very different experience
Rachel: I have similar experiences and I have heard so many from other people. I can tell you one of the things that I am the proudest of in my career several years ago, I was with a small tech company. We were 100% remote even before COVID hit. My SVP of ... She was an SVP of design was highly empathetic. Actually, she’s one of the people that I interviewed for my book, highly empathetic and everyone on the team adored her. And our team actually grew from, I think it was about 12 people when I first joined, and it ended up through a variety of hiring and combinations of teams being over 80 people at the time the layoffs happened when I was let go.
Everyone on the team totally adored her. I was a senior manager of operations, but I was focused very heavily on team operations and engagement. And through the work that she and I did together and our other, the rest of the leadership team, all people that she hired, almost all people she hired, we got one of the highest employee engagement scores in the entire company and we had 0% attrition from our team in all of 2021, which was the height of the great resignation. So, I went through this whole period thinking that we were in such a wonderful place and loving my work and loving the team. And it wasn’t really until after I left the company that I started hearing horror stories from people in other parts of the organization and on other teams about how horrible the leadership was and just kind of nightmarish stories.
And there are people who were really traumatized by some of the things that happened in that company. And it sounds like two different organizations completely.
Kim: And it’s so funny. Same company, same values on paper, different managers, different team altogether. I can so relate to that. And the funny thing is, is that the managers that probably have the less happy teams get the promotions because they align with the mentality of the higher-ups. Yeah, there’s just a change that we need to see.
Rachel: Big time. Absolutely big time. Yeah.
Kim: Just so funny because yeah, if we could get through to these different-thinking folks about the strength of their empathic leaders and how people support their teams in a better way. Yeah, there’s more work that needs to be done there.
Rachel: There is a lot more work that needs to be done. And again, as I said before, I think it’s on both sides. It’s also empowering the more perceptive leaders to speak up and to advocate for themselves. Another thing that I find is they are very, very willing to advocate for their teams and almost never willing to advocate for themselves. And it’s a ...
Kim: Right.
Rachel: Yeah. It’s a really fascinating dynamic. As Esther talks about this in her book, too, and it’s something that I raised several times in mine. We are wired to optimize for successful group outcomes. We are not people who are focused on our own personal agendas for the most part. And so, we’re always looking out for other people. There’s also, I mean, on the ... I talk a lot about two sides of the coin, the strengths and the challenges of these traits. And yes, there’s the empathy and then there’s also the people pleasing. And so a lot of the time ... I’ve heard stories from more than one leader about being asked to identify people on their team to have to let go and deciding instead to have themselves be put on that list because they wanted to save all of the people on their team.
Kim: You’re so right. This manager I was telling you about, I had circled back with him and he said that, that there was a lot going behind the scenes and he felt it was his duty to keep us separated from that so we could focus on our work, but he had taken on a lot of that stress.
Rachel: Yeah, exactly.
Kim: Yeah.
Rachel: It’s the buffering because they do care so much for their teams. And that’s one of the things that can lead to the burnout, which is so very high for neurodivergent folks. That’s another topic that I’m really, really passionate about. And I see it right now, probably 85% of my clients have fairly severe burnout, and they’re all neurodivergent in one way or another. Almost all of them identify as highly sensitive in one way or another, and they are all burned out. And this is something that we are seeing so much more of than I think ever before, because we tend to take on so much and there are many, many reasons for it, but one of them is that we tend to take on so much on behalf of other people and not take care of ourselves, put ourselves last.
Kim: Before we move on, I wanted to ask you quick if you had some examples about the gifts that you were mentioning, because you mentioned that it’s important for HSPs, especially in leadership or corporate environment to accept your gifts. And it was interesting when I heard you say that, part of me was like, are you talking skill or are you talking gifts? And I’m curious if you could maybe share your idea of those two things because I think when we’re employed, we’re thinking of everything in terms of, what’s my skill? Am I a good writer? But it could be deeper than that for the highly sensitive.
Rachel: I think it is deeper than that. And I think there are things ... It’s an interesting question, the difference between a skill and a gift. And I think there are things that people talk about as skills. People talk about empathy as a skill. I think that there is a certain amount of empathy that is innate. That doesn’t mean you can’t learn it. And so, do we talk about the difference between a gift and a skill as being something that can be learned or something that can’t be learned? I don’t know. I don’t know what the answer to that is. I do know that the things I’m talking about are innate and can be developed further and empathy is a huge one. It’s a great example. We tend to, as a population, as a percentage of the population, be very, very highly empathetic.
We also, I’ll go back to what I was talking about before with the downloading lots of information. So, one of the definitions of an HSP is we process information deeply, but the other piece of that is we’re actually, our brains are filtering out less information than, I’m going to use air quotes, a “typical brain.”
And so, there’s more to process as well as processing it deeply. And that’s when I was talking before about connecting the dots. I think that is an enormous gift. It’s huge in being able to think strategically and plan and understand what will and won’t work when you’re talking about finding solutions for things. There is a lot of out-of-the-box thinking and creativity. There is ... Hang on. I have a whole list of them, and I have some slides that I was printing out.
Kim: I think this is such a great exercise because again, when people are thinking of themselves professionally, they’re trying to fit themselves into different boxes and it’s like there’s so much more you have. So yeah.
Rachel: Exactly. So, finding beauty in small things around us, just because we tend to notice all of the little details of things. Another thing that I find, and this isn’t universal, none of these things are universal, but it tends to be very common is we have an ability to see both the big picture and the details, which is unusual because most people lean towards one or the other. And I know that a lot of us, we can be perfectionistic. We tend to be very, very focused on the details, but we also have a really amazing gift to be able to stand back and see the entire picture and all of the ways that the details play into it. And that combination is a gift in a lot of different kinds of roles and functions, for example, in the workplace. We tend to be very values-driven and focused on social justice and on equity and inclusion and belonging.
Sometimes we are able to focus very deeply and really dive down into things and get to solutions or answers that may be deeper than the surface level that other people around us are willing to accept. I do talk about the fact that all of these things are two sides, are one side of a coin and there’s always something on the other side. But I also believe that learning to recognize these as gifts and embracing them as gifts and harnessing them helps us deal with some of the challenges much more effectively.
Kim: Yeah. It helps us deal with the challenges, and it almost gives us another layer to our professional lives that a lot of people don’t have. That’s an advantage if you ask me, especially if we know how to kind of frame it and with confidence and strength.
Rachel: Exactly. And I would say not even just our professional lives, but our personal lives as well. I mean, one of the things Elaine Aron talks about is our love of the arts and music and how things can move us very deeply. One of the things that I talk about a lot with my clients, and going back to the topic of burnout, is what brings you joy? So many of us are focused on doing things for other people and doing the things we have to do, and our sense of responsibility can be oversized. We often put 150% of ourselves into what we’re doing.
Another gift is the ability to appreciate small things that other people miss. I talk about taking micro breaks and just sort of unplugging just for a moment because our brains need breaks and our emotions need breaks and everything needs a break. I don’t have it where I’m working right now, but in the last place I was living, I had a little avocado tree that was right outside my office window and I could just turn my head and I’m not usually a bird person, but the tree was literally, I mean, if I could have put my arm out the window, I could have touched it. There were all these little birds that used to hop around in that tree, and they were all different colors and some of them were tiny and they used to chirp and hop and flutter. There were hummingbirds. I could just look at that tree for five minutes and that was an actual nature break.
And it could really reset my brain from whatever it is that I was focusing on. And a lot of people miss those things and aren’t able to appreciate them the same way.
Kim: Yeah. And I love that point because it doesn’t have to be a huge gesture. You don’t have to schedule an entire vacation, though we do need those.
Rachel: Yes, yes.
Kim: Yeah. You can find these moments of joy and peace and breaks to reset throughout the day in just smaller ways.
Rachel: Exactly. And I strongly encourage it. If you don’t do this already, figure out what those things are that make you happy, that bring you joy, and bring more of them into your day.
Kim: So important. So, what would you say you struggle with when it comes to high sensitivity? What’s a challenge for you?
Rachel: I definitely have a couple. I am extremely sensitive to sound and noise, and it can really just ... Noise that I can’t control or can’t get away from can really upset my whole nervous system. And that is a constant struggle for me. I’m always trying to find different ways to calm it and ignore it or whatever I can do. Also, just our reactions to things, my reactions to things. I mean, I am a very emotional person and, I definitely have a lot more tools to use and to manage that than I did when I was younger. But I believe that there is a massive overlap between sensitivity and other forms of neurodivergence. So, ADHD, I’ve learned that I have autistic traits as well. And with ADHD in particular, there’s a trait called sensitivity ... No, rejection sensitivity dysphoria. This is something that is also true for a lot of people who just consider themselves HSPs and no other traits.
Emotional dysregulation is very, very, very common. And so, I’m not going to say that I know the answer. There’s a whole controversy around HSP and is it really the same as autism? Is it different? Is it ... I have my own thoughts on that, but I don’t think that enough research has been done to give us the answers that we need and probably won’t be for a while. But I do think that the emotional regulation part, I know it’s a struggle for me. And this comes up for a lot of leaders that I work with too, especially women. We cry about things. It doesn’t make us weak, but we feel like it does because we cry when other people are like, “This has nothing to do with you.” Or, “This was a business decision.” And our empathy and our other emotions are in overdrive.
So, we react more strongly than other people. And I know that’s been something that I struggle with.
Kim: Yeah, I hear you, especially in the workplace. And like you said, this stuff happens in our personal lives too, but just because your work is in the corporate, it’s making me think that way. Yeah. It’s hard to show emotion at work where it’s told to be so stoic, but bring your whole selves, just not- Right. Right? Yeah. Right, exactly.
Rachel: Yeah.
Kim: And our emotions are markers. And yeah, it’s funny, I actually recently stopped apologizing for getting teary. Instead of apologizing, I’ve been kind of standing in my power and just explaining like, “Oh, these are excited tears. I’m really excited about this.” Or like, “I’m really happy and feeling really overwhelmed with joy. So, this is why I’m crying.” Kind of explain it, but not apologize for it because, yeah. Yeah. It’s not a weakness.
Rachel: It’s interesting because I think I love that you’re doing that. And I also try not to apologize for it, but the tears, sometimes the tears are of joy and that’s an easy one to explain. Sometimes they’re because of something that is really sad or wrong or frustrating or angering. And I see this with a lot of my clients will be in session and they’ll be talking about something and they’ll be very emotional about it and they’ll apologize to me. And I’m like, “No, please, please, please don’t apologize. This is natural.” The beauty of it is that you are showing emotion, whereas so many people think that we shouldn’t be or we can’t, or it’s wrong to be showing emotion in front of people who are not your closest friends and family.
Kim: Yeah. You care so deeply. You feel so deeply that it’s coming out in this way, and it’s beautiful.
Rachel: Yeah, exactly. And yet there are definitely times when it’s frustrating or feels inappropriate. I had an interesting conversation. One of the women that I interviewed for Perceptive, the book, talked about when she was a leader, one of her struggles was if she had to have a difficult performance conversation with someone or if she had to lay someone off, she didn’t want to show emotion because she felt that would be, I’m not sure what the word is, maybe almost disrespectful to them.
Kim: Stepping on their toes, “This is your layoff. How dare I kind of get these emotions from you?”
Rachel: Exactly, exactly.
Kim: I get that. Yeah.
Rachel: And yet I know, I mean, at least twice when I’ve been in layoff situations, when I’ve been the person being laid off and my boss has shown emotion, that is so much more meaningful to me than, for example, the executive who didn’t once look me in the face, looked down at the floor in a different direction when he was telling me I no longer had a job. I was just like, “God, what an ass.”
Kim: Show me some respect.
Rachel: Exactly, exactly.
Kim: I can take this, lay it on me.
Rachel: Exactly. So yeah, it’s an interesting gift and challenge.
Kim: Yeah. And what do you love about high sensitivity? What do you celebrate about this trait?
Rachel: So many things. I love that I do notice things that other people don’t. I love that I can see several steps ahead. And now that I understand that that’s what’s happening, I can use it in more productive and effective ways than I was able to in the past. So, I’ve gotten in trouble for that, as have many of the people that I coach, but once we know it’s going on, it’s definitely a gift. My creativity, my out-of-the-box thinking, my sensing of energy and ability to understand what other people are going through and dealing with. And yeah, so many things.
Kim: Yeah. And then what kind of advice would you give HSPs who may be struggling to find happiness or joy, and fulfillment in their life? What could you share?
Rachel: I think the most important thing is to ... Two things. One of them is to listen to yourself. Really get to know yourself and the things that, as I mentioned before, the things that bring you joy, the things that you really love to do. So many of us are, and I see this all the time with clients, when they’re laid off from a job, or they’re looking for a change, they’re like, “Well, I could do this, or I could do that, or I could do this other thing.” Yes, we know you’re smart. We know you’re capable. We know you could do any of these things. What do you want to do? What would bring you joy?
Kim: Everything in your soul.
Rachel: Yeah, exactly. Stop doing everything for everyone else. Stop carrying the world. Really sit down and learn what you want. You deserve it. And the other part of it is learning to give ourselves, all of ourselves, more grace because we tend to be particularly hard on ourselves. We tend to have very high standards, higher than other people around us, and that includes standards for ourselves and for others, very high expectations. And sometimes those expectations are really not meetable. And if we could sometimes just kind of take a step backward and look and see that our other people’s 100% might be our 75, maybe we could dial it down just a little bit and let good enough be good enough and not drive ourselves so hard.
Kim: That’s such a beautiful message. And I feel that resonates with me because I do not only in my heart and myself, I’m like, “Well, if this friend isn’t perfect or this relationship isn’t 100%, then I’m gone.” But it’s like, no one’s perfect, including ourselves and a little grace, not self-sacrificing grace. Grace and a little give and take can really open ourselves up to new experiences.
Rachel: It makes a huge difference and not only open us up to new experiences, but stop burning ourselves out. I mean, I did a talk a few weeks ago on neurodivergence and burnout and 3,000 people attended and I am still getting feedback from that talk. Every single person who sent me a message or an email or who I’ve had a call with since then has talked about how hard they drive themselves and how much they’ve put into their jobs especially, but also other aspects of their lives. And it’s not appreciated. And if we look around and we really observe, other people tend not to put 150% into everything they do. So how can we learn from that? How can we give ourselves more grace and learn to take care of ourselves a little better?
Kim: 100%. Thank you so much for that, Rachel. And thank you so much for joining me today. Where can people follow along on your journey?
Rachel: So, a couple places. I am on LinkedIn and it’s just Rachel Radway. There are very few of us in the world, and I think I’m the only coach. And my website is rercoaching.com. It’s my initials, R-E-R, coaching.com.
Kim: And what’s the title of your book and how can people find it?
Rachel: The book is called Perceptive: Insights for leaders who feel more, process deeply, and think differently.
Kim: Amazing. Well, thank you so much for the work that you do. It was really a pleasure to chat with you today.
Rachel: It was a pleasure. Thank you for having me, Kim.
Thanks so much for listening in on my conversation with Rachel. I hope this conversation helped you remember that your empathy, emotional awareness, and deep thinking are strengths, even in leadership. These skills and gifts help us see problems earlier, connect teams more effectively, and lead with a deeper level of awareness.
Until next time. Take care.
About Rachel Radway:
Rachel Radway is a certified leadership and executive coach, mentor, speaker, and award-winning author with more than 25 years’ experience in corporate leadership roles at startups, national nonprofits, Fortune 100s, and global enterprises. With compassion and a deep understanding of all the disconnects between the corporate world and brains that are wired a little differently, Rachel helps high-achieving, highly perceptive, and neurodivergent clients lead with confidence, clarity, and authenticity — and without burning out. Her book, Perceptive: Insights for leaders who feel more, process deeply, and think differently, has won a Nonfiction Book Awards Silver, a NYC Big Book Award, a Best Book Award, and a Best Indie Book Award.
Follow along on Rachel’s journey:
Website: https://www.rercoaching.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reradway
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Kimberly Marshall is an ICF-certified Energy and Intuition coach for highly sensitive people (HSPs) and host of The Happy HSP Podcast. After 20 years in the publishing industry working for companies like Time Inc., Monster.com, and W. W. Norton, she left her corporate career to pursue work that better suited her HSP needs. She now helps HSPs reconnect with their intuition, energy, and soul’s purpose so they can live gentle, heart-centered lives in alignment with who they truly are.
Through her work, Kimberly hopes to shed more light on the reality of living with high sensitivity and inspire more HSPs to embrace their empathetic, loving, and gentle natures.
Hosted/produced by Kimberly Marshall
Edited by Fonzie Try Media
Artwork by Tara Corola